The Hard Stuff.

You know those boiled lollies from Darrell Lea?  The ones in the little jar... you do know them, you are drooling just thinking about them aren't you?  Well, today I let Dragon buy a jar.

At first they were like gold dust for him, so precious and rare and he held them tightly and kept them close.

Once we got a chance to sit down he started getting stuck into them, they were sustenance, you would swear they were all that was going to keep him alive if you watched him eat them.  He offered me an occasional sweet but mostly they were going to him.

Soon, they became his caffeine, his cigarettes, they were an addiction but they didn't rule his life, he could give them up if he wanted... sure he could, he just didn't want to at that point.  We got home and I cut him off, I made him put them on the bench for his nap time.  "I'll just cuddle them mummy, I wont open them up".  I should have had the alarm bells going off then... "No, sweetie, just put them on the bench and you can have some more after your nap".

Later he wakes from his nap, he emerges from his room shaking, bleary eyed, he walks into a wall and bounces off it, he stumbles into the kitchen and grunts at me, he reaches his pudgy but shaking little hand up to the bench, grabs his bottle and shakily opens the lid, he shakes a couple into his hand and tosses them into his mouth, chews them up and swallows... "Good mornin' mummy" he chirps up to me in his sweetest voice.  The lollies have changed him, they are his crack, he was tossin' back the hard stuff... I took control of the jar after that.



picture credit